Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

Re:Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'g... by mdkess on Friday September 28, 2012 @02:07PM (#4586940)

As a Canadian, one thing that I don't understand is why companies don't move to Canada. I feel like working in the states, I've priced myself out of the Canadian market (since salaries in Canada for engineers seem to be about 60-70% of what they are in the US), but I can't imagine that Vancouver or Toronto would be that hard to build an office out of. Yet for the most part, companies don't. From my understanding, there would be a lot of benefits to having Canadian offices - easy to travel to the home base when needed, good health care, better immigration laws, and a lot of local talent. When recruiting, we recruit very heavily from Canadian schools. But then we take everyone back to the US with us.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'g... by rayiner on Friday September 28, 2012 @02:24PM (#4587025)

Not just Canada, but really anywhere else. In any city with strong public universities there are strong pools of skilled tech workers. But tech companies are bizarrely centralized. Microsoft, etc, expects everyone to head over to their neck of the woods, and a lot of people just aren't going to do that.

Build substantially sized outputs in any of: Atlanta (Duke, GT, UNC), Philadelphia (Penn, Penn State), Boston (MIT/Harvard), Chicago (U of C, NU, U of I), Minneapolis (U of Minn.), Austin (U of T), etc, and you'd have access to a large pool of well-educated tech workers. These folks aren't going to leave their families behind and go to the left coast for jobs, but they'd love to work for a big well-known tech company.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'g... by mdkess on Friday September 28, 2012 @02:42PM (#4587126)

I totally agree with you on this, but I think that is a separate issue at least in that it doesn't address immigration, but I do think that it touches at the heart of the problem.

Companies like Microsoft are willing to give kids out of school $100k/year to move to Seattle, San Francisco or New York, but why not Vancouver or Toronto? The Toronto-NY connection especially feels like it should be much stronger, with Porter you can fly between the two cities from downtown for well under $200.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'g... by untog on Friday September 28, 2012 @02:42PM (#4587124)

I lived in Canada for two years on a "working holiday" visa, which eventually ran out. There are two reasons why I moved to the US:

- No-one really seemed to be doing startups. More importantly, there didn't seem to be many investors, either. I understand that is changing these days, but it's not surprising that companies don't move to Canada when the support infrastructure isn't there.

- No companies wanted to sponsor me. Most had never done it before and were very nervous about the idea. American companies approached me and offered to sort out a visa for me. The difference was like night and day.

[ Parent | on HN ]